Page 125 of Oh, Flutz!

It’s like I’m possessed. I’m talking and I can’t stop. I’m seeing red. Something in me has finally cracked open, and there’s no stopping it now. “Iwent to her hockey games, and her middle school graduation, and I cooked for all of us when there wasn’t anything left in the freezer. I had to raise my little sister and take care of my paraplegic fucking father, because you picked up every shift you could so you didn’t have to deal with us.”

Mom is trembling, shaking like a leaf. “You,” she says, quietly, her voice shaking too, “have no idea what it was like. Seeing him that way…"

Any other time I would’ve burst out laughing right then and there, but I’m so enraged I can’t even think about it. “Neither do you! You weren’t even there! You didn’t ‘see’ him that way. It was me. Me and my three-year-old sister. We had to see it. We had toliveit, Mom. He was so depressed he didn’t leave the room for a year, Mom. He was depressed for the rest of his life. FormonthsI had to listen to him crying at night when you weren’t there. I had to try and keep him from making me want to hurt myself with all the shit he said because he couldn’t handle what had happened to him. He took it all out on me.”

By now I’m shaking too, crying like I’ve never done in front of her. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever cried in front of her. Like I thought it would make her upset. Like it would be adding more of a burden to her when she was already constantly stressed because of work, because of Dad, because of Alex, because of me.

“I was akid, Mom. I thought it was my fault. No one ever told me it wasn’t.” Tears are freely running down my face now, my whole face hot and sticky, but I don’t care. I take a shaky breath, before I finally say it. “Younever told me it wasn’t.”

She’s crying. “Bryan,” she says, but she doesn’t finish the sentence.

And for once. I’m the one who leaves.

Idrive around forwhat feels like hours. I floor the pedal, I crawl along the street, I drive around my old neighborhood and the streets I grew up on, armed with a license this time around, armed with my same self but a slightly bigger body, still that boy who never knew what to do with himself and grinned bigger and bigger to hide it all.

I think when I moved in with Lian it still hadn’t hit me the magnitude of what had happened. That I was officially—well, not officially, because Lee and Deanna were somehow able to ward off Child Services so I didn't up in foster care—homeless, parentless. Not sisterless, at least. I think that’s what kept me sane. That, and skating. I still had that. And I still had Ollie and Nina and Juliet and Lian. It was enough to act like things were still normal.

Besides, it was never,never step foot in this house again. I almost wish it were. Maybe that way it would’ve been easier. But Mom just stood there. Pretending nothing was happening. Letting it all happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll blame my dad forever, too, but he, at the very least, had an explanation. Not an excuse, but an explanation. She didn’t. She wasn’t the one who had her legs taken out from under her, literally and figuratively. She could’ve stepped up. She could’ve been a parent, and she didn’t do it. She could’ve been there, for Dad, for me, for Alex.

And, hell, if she couldn’t handle it, she could’ve divorced him. Made it official. Maybe that would’ve been the wake-up call Dad needed.

What does it matter, anyway? I don’t need to sit here, in the driver’s seat of my own car, making up excuses and talking about hypotheticals, wondering what could’ve been different for my parents to be parents, instead of me parenting them and my sister. For my sister not to have seen all of that happen, see her big brother so damn helpless.

We were kids. We werekids.

“Fuck you,” I say aloud, the one thing I didn’t say. “Fuck you, Mom.”

He’s dead. She left.

The writing’s on the wall.

Iend up, unsurprisingly,at Lian’s front door.

I think on some level I was trying to avoid Ollie and Nina, just because I can’t stand how sorry they are for me even if their intentions are nothing but good. The both of them have the worst poker faces in the world. Every time I look at them, I see,poor Bryan, with his broken heart and his dead dad.

Lee knows me well enough to know when to leave me alone, and she lets me slip inside and upstairs before they can see me. They’re in the living room, packed on the couch, watching some competition on the TV and probably eating from Lian’s stock of ice cream.

I duck into my old room, shucking my suit off and carefully closing the door until I hear the tiny click and the sounds of laughter and clinking bowls muffle. Then I crawl into bed, pulling the covers over my head and falling asleep before I can let myself think about the last person who stayed here.

I dream of falls. Of screaming. And then I open my eyes, and that’s when I realize the screaming is coming from downstairs.

I rush down, nearly toppling down the last few steps because I’m still half-asleep, and I barge into the living room. I know it’s bad, because no one is surprised to see me.

“Is everything okay?”

Nina’s eyes are glued to the screen, hand over her mouth in horror. Ollie looks like he’s going to be sick. Lian takes a step closer, face ashen.

“Bry, honey. It’s Katya.”

I really try to pretend like hearing her name isn’t like getting a punch to the stomach. “What about her?”

And that’s when I look past my coach to see what’s on the screen. A skater splayed out on the ice, completely motionless, a team of medics crowded around her. For a second I think she’s dyed her hair again. On second glance, I see that it’s really just blood.

Lian looks like she’s seen a ghost. She’s never scared. She doesn’t get scared when we fall. “I’m calling Mikhail.”Oh my God.

I’m going to puke. I’m going to throw up. I don’t even realize that I sit down, but I do, my legs suddenly giving way. “How long has she been down? What are they—“ I can’t even get the words out. “Why isn’t she moving?” I turn to the others, and they just stare back at me, mouths half-open. “Why isn’t she getting up?”

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